


Scraps

by kryptic



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Chapter 4 contains Gore, Chapter 4 contains Mutilation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptic/pseuds/kryptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Literally just that - scraps that don't have enough direction to be made into something more, yet don't quite deserve to be thrown out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Lonely One

They call him demon because they do not comprehend him.  Men fear what they do not understand.

But he has dwelled in the Void long before the humans existed.  Eternity gave birth to him, and the universe was its labor pains.

He woke in the great fertile blackness, in the life-giving dark.  In the firmament, in the depths, he fashioned his body and carved out his home.

He is the gargantuan, the unfathomable.  He is the slick skin which has never seen the sun.  He is the wordless song in the depths of the waves.  He is the breaching, the fountain.  He is the tentacle and the ink.  He is the rotting corpse consumed by a thousand mouths.  He is the scent of blood and saltwater.  He is the traveler, the wanderer.  He is the lonely one.


	2. Beloved

Her voice is soothing and deep as the brown of her skin. She cradles him in arms strong and gentle, smooths a mahogany palm over his face. For nine months, the only sound he hears is the beating of her heart. For nineteen years, his own beats in unison.

She calls him “beloved” all his life until it becomes his name. It is so long until he understands. Why their voices sound so strange, why they face her with disapproving stares at the market, why she tows him away by the hand if a stranger ever draws near. Why no one has hair like his mother’s, slick black braids with charms woven into their ends. Why she is glad that he has drawn from his father’s side, that his skin is many shades lighter than her own.

She prays for the Outsider to watch over him, and watch over He does.


	3. The Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mirror is not that which it reflects.

He frightens children. He slaughters the weak. He leads the righteous astray.

Men with evil in their hearts guard themselves against that which gives them the power to act upon it. Men with doubt in their minds guard themselves against that which plants the seeds of understanding.

The name they have given him is perhaps the most telling detail of all. It speaks to his nature that he does not argue against it.

But Corvo knows that the Outsider is more than what they say of him. He knows that the sea can crush and kill and drown, tumble a man into a place so deep and dark that he forgets the direction of the sun. And yet. The image of crystal-clear water lingers in his memory, an ocean laid out so wide and vast and expansive below a burning sky and a horizon he will never touch.

He remembers days on the beach, lying on the sand and letting the water lick at his feet, soothing hot skin reddened by sun. He remembers the quiet rush of foam, the boom of a wave as it curls into itself, the steady ebb and flow so gentle and yet so powerfully consuming that all other things seem to fade away. He remembers a churning stomach and a heavy fever which drove him not to his mother, but to the sea, and the soothing, maternal touch of the tide which her hands never possessed.

And that is how he knows. Many things, but one most of all. That the Outsider is not what they make him out to be, that perhaps he is not even _he_. That no good can exist without evil and no pleasure can exist without pain. That no star can appear without night. That the only thing a man can see when he looks into a mirror is his own visage staring back at him, though he may turn away from the sight of his own reflection. That heresy is only a word, but worship is a feeling. That receiving the mark itched, but the brand of the Torturer _burned_. That it is better to be told a painful truth than to be lied to.

That the ocean loved him, and he can never deny that he loved it in return.


	4. The Young Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, not a story about Robb Stark (the crowd applauds). This is a short, stupid little drabble about a young, cutthroat Daud that I didn't want to throw out completely. Neither do I want to do anything else with it.
> 
> Ergo, it gets posted here.

He’s a cold customer, the young man who now sits at the bar. His eyes are steel-grey and piercing, even in the dim lighting of the tavern. They stare over his drink at the bartender, following his every movement with an antagonistic sort of suspicion. Black leather is buttoned and buckled all the way up to his throat. His hair is almost as dark, perhaps in need of a trim, shoved back impatiently from a widow’s peak as if his idea of good grooming is a wet comb.

He wears gloves even as he drinks, which is strange. They’re dark leather, soft and supple, like new. From their apparent quality, they must have cost a good deal of coin, but some deadly glimmer in the quiet youth’s face says that he did not pay for them in gold or silver.

The most frightening thing about him, though, is his smile. It’s a razor of white teeth between thin, humorless lips, and it looks as if it’s possibly the last thing many men have ever seen. He flashes it now as the man he’s come here to meet finally enters the room.

There’s a gaping, red hole where this newcomer’s eye used to be. He’s a hulking brute of a man, the kind that you would need an entire squad of city guards just to get to his knees. Despite his handicap, he finds his employee easily enough, standing beside the stool adjacent to the youth as if too wary to sit down.

“Left-Side,” Daud says by way of greeting.

There’s a little lilt in his voice, a sort of purr. The accent of Serkonos is hard to drive out, even years after his last sight of its shores.

The other man nods acknowledgement and slams a hamlike fist on the counter, ordering whatever the fuck you got, and none of that Bottle Street piss.

Daud remains impassive, staring straight ahead, his pale eyes focused on the nothingness at the back of the room. His glass is poised, half-raised to his lips, as if he was struck by some sudden thought mid-sip and forgot his own thirst.

“Fancy lil’ prize you got there, son,” growls Left-Side in his bear’s voice.

Daud turns slowly and raises his eyes to the older, larger man, his gaze intense. He flexes one hand – his left, the one not holding a glass – and grins.

“I thought they’d look good on me.”

The boss-man chuckles. “And how about the bloke what ‘chu took ‘em from?”

“He doesn’t have hands to put them on anymore.”

Now, Left-Side’s drink arrives and he finally sits down. When the barkeep makes to leave, Daud stops him with one grasping hand, its grip like iron.

“Leave the bottle,” he says, and puts a stack of ten-pieces on the counter between them.

The man obeys and flees just as soon as he can. Customers like these arrive but every once in a long while, and he knows the best way to deal with them is to make yourself so scarce they may not remember your face.

If the City Watch comes calling, he’ll tell them he never saw.

“What chu’ bring me out here for?” the older man asks, filling his glass to a frankly impolite volume and taking a mighty swig.

“I thought we could talk about work,” Daud says, and finally tosses back the rest of his drink. He tops off his own glass as well, and tilts almost imperceptibly towards his employer.

Left-Side swivels to set his good eye on the young man, peering at him suspiciously.

“Now, I tol’ ya you wasn’t gonna get promoted. I don’ care how fancy yer footwork is, there’s better n’ older men who been waitin’ for it years longer n’ you.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, his voice cool. For a moment, there almost seemed to be a flash of anger in his eyes, but it must be a trick of the light, because his tone is low and steady. “I’d never try to get in ahead of Tyro and the rest. Age before beauty.”

Now Left-Side’s Cyclopean gaze narrows even further.

“Whadda you want, then?”

Daud raises one dark brow.

“Just to talk.”

He tops his own glass and Left-Side’s from the bottle and gulps down the liquor like water. His boss, long accustomed to being the bigger man, fills his own drink even higher and makes it disappear.

“I’ve heard the Hatters are giving you trouble down on Myrtle Street,” the younger man begins again.

Left-Side’s amiable expression twists into a frown.

“Who told ya that?”

“It’s plain for anyone to see. There’s a bit of shame, in being bested by a bunch of seamstresses like them, wouldn’t you agree? A Hatter can’t tell a sword from his cock, or so they say.”

He drinks again. Now the bottle is a little less than half empty, and he shows no signs of slowing.

Once again, Left-Side moves to match him. There’s a hesitation on his face, as if he doesn’t quite want to do it, but his pride makes him grab that glass and gulp it down.

He only makes it halfway through before he has to stop, sighing in the way men do when they feel that burn on their throat and setting his drink down with a thump on the bar.

“I got Myrtle Street under control, and don’ you be tellin’ me how ‘shamed I should be, or I’ll have yer eyes decoratin’ my wall.”

Daud wrinkles his nose slightly. Left-Side’s habit of collecting traitor’s eyes and encasing them in jars in his office has always struck him as … distasteful. Not to mention cowardly. If he were for true, he’d take them while the men were still alive, and only one. That way, they could come back for him if they wanted to.

Then he could take the other one, and leave them blind. That would send a message.

That’s how Daud would do it. He’s convinced it’s the right way. The only way.

His grey eyes follow the contours of the bottle, up and down and up again. He pours the rest of it liberally, into his own glass and Left-Side’s, and the look on his boss’s face makes him smile again.

A wolf’s smile, all sharp and full of teeth. He keeps his eyes on the older man as he drinks, and drinks, like it’s nothing.

Left-Side moves to stand and tips precariously, barely keeping his balance. He sways on the other side of the stool that stands between them, and his fingers fumble on his cup. He drinks a quarter of its contents and stops.

Daud is no longer smiling.

The young man stands now, uncurling like a shadow across the wall. He seems taller somehow, darker, like he takes up more space in the world. There’s a knife in his boot and he bends to grab it, coming with casual ease towards Left-Side.

The big man takes a swing, and he ducks it. He takes a step forward and Daud raises a hand. There’s a glow through the leather, blue and yellow and green, and that’s when Left-Side’s one eye goes largest. He freezes in the air, immobile, and watches as the young man steps forward.

“Yer … yer …”

“One of His?” Daud asks, and sends his knife right through Left-Side’s left side.

He tips the bartender for the trouble.


End file.
